Leia Fett
by Lucillia
Summary: Sometimes things happen. Things such as Luke being wrapped in the wrong blanket when Obi-Wan Kenobi is ambushed on the way to the Lars family farm.
1. The Bounty Hunter and the Blanket

Obi-Wan Kenobi felt vaguely guilty over wandering around Senator Amidala's ship so soon after she had "Lost the will to live". "Lost the will to live." being code for the Medical Droids effed up and weren't saying anything in order to avoid the lawsuit, and if anyone asked, it was the patient's fault that they died. The reason that he was poking around the ship though was to see if Senator Amidala had left any information that could be of use to anyone but the Sith Lord who had just taken over the galaxy and those that supported him behind.

When he looked through the recently deceased senator's quarters, he found a rather ornate sewing basket with a few projects stashed in it. On the top of the pile of projects that awaited completion were a pair of beautifully embroidered baby blankets, one in duck hatchling yellow, and the other in a rather fetching shade of spring green. The yellow one was still in an embroidery hoop with a half completed name stitched into it. The green one looked to have been recently completed however.

He took the green blanket, since it was much nicer, softer, and warmer looking than the one issued by the hospital and of far better quality than anything Anakin's step-brother would be able to purchase for his nephew. Senator Amidala had meant for the blanket to go to her child, and it would go to her child. The fact that it was meant for Luke's sister was immaterial at this point.

Finding nothing else of use, he left the ship and made his way back to Luke and the transport that would take the both of them to Tatooine where he would be living for an indefinite period while he watched over Luke to make sure nothing happened to him after he gave him to Owen and Beru Lars.

It was understandable that Kenobi didn't sense the presence until it was far too late as he rode through the desert a few days later. He'd been awake for 72 hours straight, and had been intent on getting to the Lars family farm which was only a few miles away at that point. By the time he realized that he wasn't alone, the slug had hit his head, and he didn't have time to realize anything else...

As he watched Obi-Wan Kenobi's corpse topple off the eopie, Boba Fett still couldn't believe his luck. He'd been wandering around Mos Eisley looking for some sort of entertainment that didn't involve things he wasn't yet old enough to indulge in before he headed out to Jabba's palace in hopes of getting some work when an extremely valuable bounty practically landed in his lap. He had spotted the Jedi who had looked dead on his feet buying an eopie while he was playing some sort of ball game that involved kicking a ball at several buildings and making a great deal of racket with a few of the local urchins.

Renting an eopie for himself since a landspeeder or a swoop bike would make too much noise, he had set off in pursuit. While Kenobi was nodding off in the saddle, he had spotted the perfect ambush point, looped around ahead of the slowly moving man and set everything up, choosing to use a slugthrower with a silencer that he'd recently acquired and had wanted to try out, rather than a blaster. With his current skill level, bringing a Jedi, especially one of Kenobi's caliber, in alive was not an option. So, he was forced to accept the lower but still rather considerable bounty for "Dead".

As he approached the now deceased Jedi and the eopie who was snacking on a plant of some sort that was growing out of one of the nearby dunes, he was startled by a loud and strangely familiar noise. Changing course and approaching the eopie from which the noise was coming instead, he found the source of the noise in one of the saddle-bags that the beast was laden down with.

It was a baby. A human or near-human infant who was wrapped in a rather pretty green blanket.

Wondering why Kenobi had a baby with him considering the fact that the man had had a reputation for being one of the most straight-laced Jedi in existence, he carefully picked the infant up and started examining it to see why it was crying. Having heard that babies could get injured or even die if you held them wrong, he did his best to hold it the way he saw the ladies on the holonet hold babies in some of the shows and advertisements he'd seen. This didn't stop the crying which grew - if possible - even louder, and he nearly dropped the baby whose name was Leia according to the blanket it was wrapped in twice as he tried to unwrap said blanket with only one hand to see if it was crying because it had somehow gotten injured when he'd killed Kenobi. It didn't appear to be, which meant that it was probably hungry or something.

A hasty search through the saddle bags turned up some baby formula, a few diapers, and some baby clothes as well as some supplies that had apparently been intended for Kenobi. He set the baby back in its carrier and mixed some of the formula he found in order to get it to stop crying, because it could attract predators, and he still had the task of hauling Kenobi's exceedingly heavy corpse over the back of what had been his eopie and riding back to Mos Eisley in order to get his ship so he could collect his bounty from someone more reputable than any of the intermediaries he would be able to find here on Tatooine.

He would be bringing the baby off-planet with him as well, since he couldn't just leave it here to get eaten, and because it would have a better chance at life somewhere other than Tatooine where the people who staffed the orphanages had a bad habit of occasionally selling the children that were brought to them.

Eventually, after several attempts at feeding the baby, and a great deal of rocking, it stopped crying and went to sleep. As soon as it did so, the thirteen year-old bounty hunter who wasn't large by any stretch of the imagination dealt with the onerous task of hauling Obi-Wan Kenobi's rapidly cooling corpse which was larger and much heavier than he was onto the back of an eopie and tying said eopie to his own before leading both animals back towards the nearest town, which was Ancorhead, since it was getting close to dark, and staying out on the desert at night was never a good idea.

Later that evening, when he was dealing with the rather unpleasant task of changing the baby's diaper, Boba Fett found himself wondering if there was a world out there where Leia wasn't a girl's name.


	2. Wasting Time at the Orphanage

Boba Fett didn't know how he'd grown so fond of the small creature that did nothing but eat, sleep, scream, and make messes in its diaper, but he had. He found himself wanting to keep him like some sort of pet, or something. Like one of the sorts of pets he hadn't been allowed to keep since most of the creatures he had wanted as a kid were banned from Tipoca city, wouldn't do well in an apartment or on a ship, or needed a specialized diet and/or atmosphere to survive. His dad's eel which had died when he'd freed it hadn't been anywhere near as interesting as Leia would be when he got a little older if the book he'd read on babies on the way over was accurate. It had been a great deal quieter though.

He just wished that he'd realized this before he'd gone all the way to Naboo. But, it had taken him standing reluctantly outside the orphanage in Theed that he'd chosen to drop the child who'd pissed in his face twice while he was changing its diapers off at for him to realize it.

He knew that he shouldn't think of the baby as a pet since he was a fellow human being, but at this point, it was like a small helpless animal that he found himself wanting to take care of for some strange reason, despite the fact that the noise it made was annoying and the fact that it had peed on him. Being peed on by small animals was nothing new for him. He'd been peed on by the small furry creature that had followed him back to the ship when he was eight, and still spent several days sulking when his dad didn't let him keep it.

There was no dad around to tell him that he couldn't keep Leia though. It was up to him whether or not he wanted to go through with the responsibility of feeding and cleaning up after a baby for the next thirteen years until it was an adult.

After bringing Kenobi's corpse to an outpost of the newly formed Empire, he'd been left with a surplus of funds, and was able to make a decision about what he was going to do with Leia. He could have turned him in when he'd handed Kenobi's corpse over, but considering the name that had been on the blanket and the results of the midi-chlorian test he had done on him on the way over, doing so would have signed Leia's death warrant. After some consideration, he had decided to leave him at an orphanage.

He had chosen to take Leia to an orphanage on the Emperor's homeworld because, Naboo was famous for having some of the most progressive child welfare laws in the galaxy. And, after traveling half-way across the galaxy to get to Naboo, he found himself standing outside the orphanage in Theed, unable to bring himself to go inside and hand the baby over. He had no idea how to properly take care of it beyond feeding it and changing its diapers, and didn't have the time to do so with his bounty hunting career, but still, he couldn't bring himself to hand the baby over.

Eventually, after spending over an hour dithering over whether he was going to hand the baby over or not, he told himself for the hundredth time that the orphanage would provide the baby a better home than a teenager who traveled around the galaxy doing a job that could get him killed at any moment could, and walked in. Besides, the people there and anyone who adopted Leia would take him because they wanted a child, not because they thought of him as an adorable pet.

&!&!&!&

Jobal Naberrie thanked her lucky stars that she'd opted to volunteer at the orphanage that day so she had something to do to keep her mind off of the fact that her daughter was gone and would never be coming back. Some people had thought it a bit callous that she had been out and about so soon after the funeral but, if she had to stay home, she would have gone mad. Doing things always helped her get over the rough patches in her life, such as the time she'd miscarried her only son and discovered that she couldn't have any more children, and the time Ruwee got sick and nearly died.

If she hadn't been there assisting with intake amongst other things, the day would have ended in disaster and most likely tragedy for her family as well. In the middle of her shift, as she was trying to re-dress a rather stubborn toddler who had removed all his clothes and run around the orphanage naked, a rather short Mandalorian bounty hunter brought in an infant that she'd acknowledged that she would quite likely never see in her lifetime due to the events that had surrounded its birth.

Part of the orphanage intake process involved checking the planetary genetic database to find out if the children who were brought to the orphanage had any living relatives on-planet in order to see whether or not there might be a distant cousin or other such relative who would be willing to take them in. Family was given the first option in the matter before a child was remanded to the custody of the orphanage and put up for adoption.

When she tested the infant the bounty hunter had brought as per procedure, she and her family came up as the closest match. A second test confirmed that the child was her grandson, the baby her Padme had died giving birth to.

She had known that her daughter's child had survived. The Jedi who had brought her daughter back, and her mother who had prepared Padme's body for her funeral had told her that much. She hadn't known any details about the child beyond that though, because what she didn't know couldn't be gotten out of her either accidentally or through torture, and therefore wouldn't put her grandchild in any further danger.

She was somewhat surprised to learn that Padme had named her son Leia, but remembered how Padme had been against forcing gender roles on children when she was younger. Giving her son a traditionally feminine name like Leia was just like the somewhat rebellious girl she remembered her daughter being before she had been hemmed in by her roles as both Queen and Senator.

After she finished testing the boy her daughter had given birth to, she brought the bounty hunter to a private place where no-one would overhear them, and offered him just about everything his little, and quite possibly non-existent, heart desired to take her grandson somewhere safe and never tell anyone where he was.

Holding back tears as she said goodbye to her grandson after the negotiations had been finished, she watched as the bounty hunter departed with the only thing that was left of Padme in the galaxy. The republic that Padme had devoted her life to was gone, and the Emperor was crushing the freedom and rights that her daughter had fought so hard for left and right.

When one of the other attendants at the orphanage asked why the bounty hunter had left without leaving the baby behind, she lied and told the man that the bounty hunter had suddenly found himself a single father at an exceedingly young age when his wife had died during a hunt gone wrong, leaving him with a child he wasn't sure he could take care of, but had found that he couldn't part with. When she was asked why she had let the boy leave with the child, she dug herself deeper as she spun another excuse. Fortunately, she knew just enough about Mandalorian culture to make it sound plausible.

&!&!&!&!&

Boba Fett walked back to his ship with a somewhat agitated baby that was threatening to start crying at any second after what would have been a wasted trip if it hadn't been for the money he'd been given by the lady at the orphanage who wanted him to stash Leia somewhere. He cursed the time he had wasted dithering over whether or not to hand the child in. All of that hesitation, and for nothing. He still ended up leaving with the baby that he still didn't really know how to take care of beyond the obvious feeding and changing of diapers.

Apparently, hiding the child as he'd just been paid to do had been what Kenobi had been doing when he shot him. Though why the Jedi would do something so stupid as hide the boy on Anakin Skywalker's homeworld, he didn't know. With a name like Leia Amidala Skywalker, someone was bound to notice the kid sooner or later.

As for the actual hiding of the child, he couldn't bring himself to just pick a random planet, dump Leia there without a name or identity and leave, which would be the easiest course to take. And, to make matters worse, he still found himself wanting to keep the kid as a pet.

His father had given him a list of people he could contact if he were in trouble and needed help. Maybe they would be able to help him figure out what to do with him. A large number of them were on Mandalore, which was a good world on which to hide a baby if worst came to worst and nobody could or would help him in the situation.

Later that evening, while he was trying to get a rather unhappy Leia to calm down, a high ranking Imperial named Malsomethingorother called with a job offer.

"Can you call back later? I'm having a hard time hearing you over the baby." he yelled over Leia's wails before disconnecting and turning back to the task of getting him to shut up.

The guy never did.


	3. Mandalore and Auditory Hallucinations

Kal Skirata sighed once again as he wondered where his plan of providing a safe haven for his boys and any other clone who wanted to ditch the Republic turned Empire had gone wrong. His home was now starting to look like a Jedi refugee camp. Keeping the Kaminoan was one thing, one of the few things that he and Walon Vau had agreed on, since the genetic modifications that had been made to her could possibly be used in order to slow his boys' aging. Keeping Scout and the Jedi Ordo's nemesis Maze had brought with him however...

Well, Scout was liked well enough around here, and Mij wanted to adopt her but, the sooner Zey was gone, the better.

It was as he was escaping from another argument with Vau whom he'd only recently started liking to a degree after he'd discovered that the other man cared for his boys in his own way that his day went from bad to worse. He'd gone outside to take a walk and cool down when a ship came in over the horizon. It had been the shape of the ship that had stopped him from calling out an alarm and possibly having his boys shoot down the potential intruder. The shape of the ship which had been so familiar because he'd seen it a million times during the eight years he'd spent in Tipoca city.

That was Fett's ship, but who was flying it?

He got his answer soon enough when a boy who looked like several million other boys including his own when they'd been that age, or rather when they'd been half that age, walked down the ramp carrying a baby. He didn't want to think about how or even why Boba Fett already had a kid considering the fact that he'd turned thirteen and become an adult only a couple of months earlier.

Before he could ask any questions, Bardan, Scout, The Kaminoan Jedi Kina Ha, and Arligan Zey came racing outside, only to stop in their tracks upon spotting the mini Fett and the kid he was carrying.

"Is that...?" Scout started.

"Skywalker's most definitely. No-one else's child would be that strong." Zey replied.

"His name's Leia." Boba supplied.

It was at that moment that he realized that no matter what he wanted, the Jedi had pretty much taken over.

&!&!&!&

A'Sharad Hett was nearly certain that he was going mad. It had to be the only explanation. After Order 66 had killed off all of the Jedi, he had made his way back home to Tatooine where he had rejoined the tribe of Tusken raiders which he had been born into and lived with until his early teens. That wasn't the source of his fears over his potential lack of sanity however, though it could be a potential cause considering the tragedies that had forced him to leave and return to his life amongst the Sand People. What was making him believe he was mad was the fact that he kept hearing Obi-Wan Kenobi's disembodied voice.

"You have to get him back, bring him to the Lars family, watch over him, and train him. It's the only way." the auditory hallucination that insisted that it was Master Kenobi was saying.

If the voice that hadn't shut up for the last three days was to be believed, Skywalker had screwed the pooch, er, screwed a senator rather, and inadvertently created what was apparently the last hope for the Jedi order and the entire galaxy as a whole before turning to the dark side and becoming Darth Vader.

"Okay mister disembodied voice that sounds like Master Kenobi, where is Skywalker's little bastard right now?" he asked the hallucination, hoping that if he played along with it, it would let him get some sleep.

"Um...er, Mandalore." the voice replied sounding distinctly unhappy.

He knew why. On Mandalore, Jedi were pretty much universally hated and may as well have been labeled with the words "Kill On Sight" in three foot high letters that had been done in holopaint.

"So, lemme get this straight." he told the voice that had been keeping him awake and making him question his sanity for the last three days. "You want me to go to a planet where Jedi have been considered to be vermin for nearly four millenia, grab a kid who may or may not exist who has probably been adopted already if he does exist from his new family if he has one - which I may remind you is courting death without even factoring in the Empire - and bring him here to a family that may or may not accept him?" he asked.

"Er, yes." the voice replied.

"I think I'll stay here." he told the voice before settling into a meditative trance that would hopefully provide him with some sort of rest.

It didn't help. The disembodied voice was apparently coming from the Force. Where was a deathstick when you needed one?

&!&!&!&!&

Kal smiled as he held little Leia who had been passed around the group already, and been introduced to Venku who had smiled upon seeing him which was a notable achievement considering how morose he'd been since his mother's death. The boy was rather adorable, and he could see why Boba wanted to keep him.

"Alright Boba, we'll help you. I would have taken you in myself if you'd come to me earlier." he said.


	4. Hett Gives In to the Crazy Side

A'Sharad Hett lasted a week. All things considered, especially a Kenobi who no longer needed to eat, sleep, go to the bathroom, or anything else for that matter, and therefore could continue bothering Hett 24/7, that was quite the accomplishment.

"Alright! I'll do it!" Hett yelled.

The sleep deprivation was having a seriously negative impact on everything, and if following the auditory hallucination's instructions was what it took to get more than a five minute nap, then so help him, he'd follow them, even if it meant flying to the Unknown Regions completely naked just to pick daisies. At this point, he no longer cared.

"Thank you." the voice said.

"You're welcome." Hett snarled. The past month had been enough to make him willing to consider joining the Sith and turning to the Dark Side.

He then walked over to the tent that belonged to the guy who had been his best buddy when he was a kid, and was his best friend now that he was attempting to reconnect with the tribe that raised him. Life back then before his dad died begging for Master Ki-Adi-Mundi to take him in and train him was fun. He and his buddies used to go out every other weekend, get drunk, and shoot pod-racers. Of course, they'd get grounded afterwards and be stuck doing women's work for two weeks, but still, watching those losers on the track crash had been absolutely hilarious. Good times.

He'd of course never told Skywalker that he'd winged his pod. The kid was touchy enough already. Fun to be around, and a good person to have at your back, or at least used to be a good person to have at your back if the voice was to be believed. All in all, he was a good friend, but touchy as hell.

Of course the fun and games all had to end when Aurra Sing showed up to watch the Boonta Eve race thirteen years ago only to see the guy she was betting on crash because of him and his buddies, and agreed to follow Gardulla and Jabba's plan to attack their main camp. So, his father's death could have sort-of arguably been his fault if he chose to see it that way. He had for a while, but his master had taught him to put the blame where it belonged, on someone else. This time, the blame had been shoved onto Sing who had been the one to kill his dad. After all, she'd made a career out of going around killing Jedi, there was a good chance that she would have killed his dad anyway if he hadn't gone out shooting pods.

That of course didn't matter now, and if he continued standing there stupidly in his buddy's tent saying nothing while his mind continued rambling on about the past, his friend was going to know that something was wrong with him. Mental illness wasn't well received amongst the Tusken Raiders. Lots of things weren't well received amongst his people, such as physical disabilities, and showing one's skin. If they ever found out that it was actually him in those holos that were taken during the recent war, they'd consider him a total pervert and cast him out. Showing his face and arms, and occasionally his torso was so far beyond unacceptable it wasn't even funny.

"Well buddy, I'm off to a planet where I'll most likely be killed for having been a Jedi in order to snatch some kid from what is undoubtedly a happy home in order to bring him to a couple of moisture farmers who live in our territory and hate our guts so I can wait until it's too late to train him to be a Jedi. Make sure nothing happens while I'm gone. I'll be back soon. Hopefully." He finally said after he'd gotten his sleep deprived thoughts in order. He hadn't gone this long without sleep in...ever. Even during the Clone Wars, he'd managed to snatch eight hours every three days or so.

"Okaaay." his friend said.

"Bye then." he said as he left the tent and made his way towards Mos Eisley to secure transport.

Several people shot at him on his way through Mos Eisley, but that was the Hutts' fault for starting up that little war between the moisture farmers and his people to get rid of a stockpile of nearly useless weapons. Thanks to that little war, just about everybody hated the Sand People, and vice versa. He didn't really hold being fired at against the people who were shooting at him. That wasn't the way of the Jedi, and since he was the last of the Jedi, and probably the only one who could take down the Empire later on despite what the auditory hallucination was telling him about Anakin's son, he shouldn't be getting too far out of the Jedi mindset.

After a while, he reached a cantina that was frequented by spacers and went inside. People stopped and stared at him. Probably because very few Sand People made it this far into Mos Eisley. He seated himself at a rather likely looking table where a man was guarding one of those sorts of drinks that supposedly had a reputation for dropping Wookiees but wasn't really all that strong, and were usually drunk by people who wanted to be seen as "badass".

"Whaddaya wan'?" the spacer slurred.

"I want passage to..." he started before the voice that had been bothering him for the last week interrupted him with a different destination.

"Alderaan? Why Alderaan?" he asked the voice aloud, not caring how he looked to the other cantina patrons at this point. He just wanted to do whatever it took to get that voice to shut up so he could get some kriffing sleep.

"Because someone needs to let Bail know that there's a Jedi in his corner if he needs one." the voice replied.

"Fine." he muttered to the voice before turning to the spacer. "I want passage to Alderaan."

"It'll cost you 8,000 credits." the spacer said drunkenly.

"Eight thousand credits!" he yelled angrily, his hand almost involuntarily going for his concealed lightsaber. His account balance was currently at zero, and the voice that wouldn't stop bothering him wanted him to shell out thousands of credits that he didn't have?

"But fortunately we're running an Insane Sand-Person discount today." the pilot quickly said. "The fee will only be the low, low price of 'Please don't kill me and take my ship. My family is depending on me.'"

"That sounds reasonable. The voice in my head claims that he has a rich friend on Alderaan that I could hit up for credits, so you might actually get something out of this." he replied.

He made sure to follow the spacer out to his ship to be sure that the man wouldn't ditch him at the first opportunity. The spacer tried to pull a blaster on him, but he pulled out his lightsaber. The spacer rapidly changed his mind and made a welcoming gesture as he lowered the ramp to his ship which was a piece of crap like almost all of the ships that landed on Tatooine.

"If you're thinking about spacing me in my sleep, you can forget it. I've been awake for a week already, and at this point, I can stay awake for another one." he said.

"Welcome aboard." the spacer said nervously. "Is there anything I can get you to drink?"

&!&!&!&!&

On Mandalore, a thirteen year-old boy held a baby and spoke several words that were as ancient as his father's people...

"Ni kyr'tal gai sa'ad. Leia." Boba said, stumbling over the words that should have been familiar to him, marking the child as his own son.

He was an adult now in the eyes of his father's people, and in his own eyes. He didn't need a pet baby, but a child who would carry on the Fett family name and bring honor to it would always be appreciated. Anakin Skywalker was a great warrior, and a child who carried that man's blood could be no less.

When the words had been spoken, his father's old friend Kal Skirata whose boys he used to needlessly antagonize when he'd been a child smiled down at him and proudly ruffled his hair.

"You'll be a great father Boba." Skirata said. "As good as your father. No, even better, because you'll have us."

&!&!&!&!&

**Author's Note: **For those who were wondering where I got the idea of A'Sharad Hett shooting at Anakin's Pod at the Boonta Eve race, A'Sharad's father's death at Aurra Sing's - who had been at the podrace - hands took place in 32 BBY which was the same year as The Phantom Menace. A'Sharad Hett who had initially been trained by his father, had been taken in by the Order upon his father's death. Hett at that time had been a teenager, and the shooting pods thing seemed more like something a teenager would do than anything.


End file.
